"No, you're going to stay here," commanded Harry, seizing her hands. "You've got to do something with Pauline. You're the only one who can. She wants a new adventure every day, and a more dangerous one every time. Talk to her, won't you? Tell her it isn't right for her to risk her life when her life is so precious to so many people. No, wait a minute; sit down here. I'm not half through yet."
He drew her, under laughing protest, to a seat beside him on the stairs. She realized suddenly how serious he was. She let her hand rest comradely in his pleading grasp.
"Why, Harry, yes, if it is really dangerous, you know, I'll do anything
I can," she said gravely.
They did not see the cold gray face of Raymond Owen appear at the top of the stairs. The face vanished as quickly as it had appeared.
In her boudoir Polly was laying out her finery of the evening. There came a soft rap at the door.
"Come in," she called, and looked up brightly in Owen's furtive eyes as he opened the door and motioned to her.
"Don't say anything, please, Miss Marvin," he whispered, "just come with me for a moment."
Bewildered by his manner, she followed to the top of the stairs. He directed her gaze to the two young people in earnest conversation below.
It was a picture that might well have startled a less impetuous heart than Pauline's. Harry's hand still clasped Lucille's, and he was leaning toward her in the eagerness of his appeal.
"You, will? You promise? Lucille, you've made me happy," Pauline heard him say.